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Yeah, "dangerous places"... like, say, Wal Mart at 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon?

http://www.katv.com/news/stories/0707/441437.html

Bystander Killed in Wal-Mart Shooting
Location: North Little Rock
Posted: July 22, 2007 5:01 PM EST
URL: http://www.katv.com/news/stories//441437.html

North Little Rock - North Little Rock Police continue to search for a suspect who allegedly killed a man in the parking lot of a North Little Rock Wal-Mart.

It’s a crime police call overwhelming--an innocent bystander shot to death by a suspect who had just stolen a woman’s purse.

Witnesses say the victim was walking into Wal-Mart with his family around 2:00p.m. Sunday, when he was shot in the parking lot.

The incident leaves many people asking, "Why?"

(Tyler Jones, Called 911) "They were just going to Wal-Mart, a family together, and it resulted in this. It doesn’t make sense."

Police say the suspect had just stolen a woman’s purse in the Wal-Mart parking lot, when he turned around and fired his gun at 40-year-old Dean Worden of Jacksonville.

Worden died at the scene. His wife and 14-year-old son were also walking into the store.

By many accounts, Worden was simply an innocent bystander, who had little or no exchange with the suspect.

(Jones) "They were all walking together…and the man is just jumping – pow! Took two shots and then the man fell to the ground and he looked this way, held his neck and fell that way."

The murder left family and friends grieving, and a police department searching.

(Sgt. Terry Kuykendall, NLR Police) "It’s so horrific. It’s bad for the community. We want to make sure we protect all the information that we need. So when we make this arrest we can get a conviction out of this."

Police did locate the suspect’s abandoned silver Chrysler 300 around 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Now they just want to find the suspect.

(Kuykendall) "I just want to ask the community to be patient and to allow our detectives to do their jobs."

The woman whose purse was taken did sustain some injuries, but she is said to be okay.


http://www.katv.com/news/stories/0707/441591.html

Police Arrest Teen in NLR Wal-Mart Slaying
Location: North Little Rock
Posted: July 23, 2007 1:14 PM EST
URL: http://www.katv.com/news/stories//441591.html

North Little Rock (AP) - North Little Rock police have made an arrest in the slaying of a Jacksonville man during a purse snatching at a Wal-Mart store.

Police say that early Monday, 17-year-old Joshua Leallen Loften was arrested for capital murder.

Police say that 40-year-old Dean Worden of Jacksonville was killed in the shooting on the busy parking lot Sunday afternoon.

The shooting occurred when a robber was trying to steal a woman's purse. Worden was not with the woman whose purse was being stolen, but was shot during the altercation.

The shooter fled, but police found the getaway car a short time later and made the arrest Monday morning.

GlockenHammer wrote:I lost consciousness when I donated a single pint of blood, and it wasn't blood sugar related, either.

That makes me smile.

When I was in college, the Army ROTC department was proud of always getting the plaque for 100% participation in the Red Cross blood drives held once per semester. It was a point of pride, and no small amount of peer pressure was applied to coerce donations.

"Peer pressure" takes on new meaning in a group of folks who can drop you for pushups in the middle of the student cafeteria.

Anyhoo... my junior year, my roommate was also ROTC, but he was deathly afraid of needles in general, and bleeding specifically. I/we persuaded him that donating blood wasn't so bad, so he and I lay on adjacent tables while the deed was done. After the needles were in, he said it wasn't so bad, and we cracked jokes while we raced to fill our bags (lots of competition in the Army, yanno! )

He actually finished a few minutes before I did, so he got a head-start on the mandatory 30 minutes of Koolaid and cookies. I was still finishing my snack when he got up to leave. He walked the length of the student center ballroom (about 50 yards), reached the top of the three steps up, whereupon his knees locked, his eyes rolled back, and the first thing that hit the marble floor was the back of his head.

Ouch. Perhaps I should point out that he was 6'2", 158 pounds, a walking poster for the Old Guard. In other words, a Q-tip with feet.

He didn't quit, though. He gave every semester after that. He was in the "Early Commissioning Program", because he had joined the National Guard at 17, so we were commissioned the same day (17 May 1985), even though I was a senior and he was a sophomore. Because of changing times, he couldn't get an active duty slot as a lieutenant when he graduated two years later, so he kept his reserve commission, and went active duty as an E-4. Already qualified as Airborne and Air Assault before he graduated, he joined the Screamin' Chicken.

One of the worst phone calls I ever received was in April, 1989. Shawn had died in a low-altitude night jump at Ft. Ord, after a double chute failure. He was a Pathfinder for the 101st Airborne. Posthumously promoted to Corporal, buried at Fort Smith national cemetery. He had been married less than two months.

RIP, Brendan Shawn Paxton, CPL, USA; 2LT, USAR.

Okay, enough reflection over absent companions... I'm still ticked that I can't give blood any more, because I lived in Germany from 1986-89. I could have mad cow, you know. Denny Crane!